Woolworths (United Kingdom)
Woolworths was a British high-street variety retail chain and conglomerate. At its height, it operated as Woolworths Group PLC, which included other companies such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK, and book and resource distributor Bertram Books. In 2009, all UK stores shut down, and in 2015, so did the website, rendering it fully defunct.
The Woolworths chain was originally a division of the American F. W. Woolworth Company until its sale in 1982. It had more than 800 shops in the UK prior to closure. Woolworths sold many goods and had its own Ladybird children's clothing range, WorthIt! value range and Chad Valley toys. They were also well known for selling pick 'n' mix sweets. It was sometimes referred to as Woolies by the UK media, the general public, and occasionally in its own television adverts. The British company also owned and operated divisions in the Republic of Ireland which closed in 1984, and Cyprus which was sold in 1985.
On 26 November 2008, trading of shares in Woolworths Group was suspended, and its Woolworths and Entertainment UK subsidiaries entered administration. Deloitte closed all 807 Woolworths shops between 27 December 2008 and 6 January 2009, resulting in 27,000 job losses. Woolworths Group plc entered administration on 27 January 2009, and it was officially dissolved on 13 October 2015. The collapse of Woolworths was a symbol of the credit crunch and financial turmoil in the United Kingdom at the end of 2008.
In February 2009, Shop Direct Group purchased the Woolworths brand and website, which continued as an online-only business, until its closure in June 2015, when it was merged into Very.co.uk.
In July 2021, the former German division of the F.W. Woolworth Company, Woolworth GmbH, acquired the British and Irish Woolworths brand and website from The Very Group for an undisclosed sum.
History
Establishment of the business
The British branch of the F. W. Woolworth Company, which had been founded in Pennsylvania, F. W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd, was founded by Frank Woolworth in Liverpool, England, on 5 November 1909. Frank Woolworth allegedly had ancestry in Woolley, Cambridgeshire – Frank claimed he had traced his ancestry through the Pilgrim Fathers to a small "farm in middle England". When Frank eventually travelled to England in 1890, he docked in Liverpool and travelled by train to Stoke-on-Trent for the purchase of china and glassware for Woolworth's ranges, but also noted his love of England in his diary and his aspirations for bringing the Woolworth name to England:During the buying trip, Woolworth met a young clerk, William Lawrence Stephenson, who was recommended to him by John Wanamaker. Wanamaker had established a large chain of department stores across the United States and was one of Woolworth's heroes. Stephenson was invited to London to meet Woolworth again, and was offered the job as director of the new company, which he accepted.
After the idea for the creation of the British business, Frank Woolworth had offered invitations to shop managers in the United States to establish shops in the UK and had only received offers to take positions at the time of his illness in March 1909 from Fred Woolworth of the Sixth Avenue and Samuel Balfour of the 14th Street shops in New York City. After these initial offers, Byron Miller, a superintendent in a Boston shop, also offered his assistance and set sail with the other volunteers on the steam boat Kaiserin Auguste Victoria on 29 May 1909 for England from Hoboken.
Frank Woolworth expected other members of staff to admire the volunteers in establishing FW Woolworth & Co in Britain. However, Carson C. Peck, vice president and general manager of the company, had reservations with enlisting staff members to travel to Britain, questioning whether Woolworth had indeed created the new business adventure following a dream, or due to his dissatisfaction with the current condition of the American branch.
Peck also asked those who were willing to volunteer to reconsider their decision, claiming that those who had volunteered were unaware of the uncertainty and risks involved and that some were only tentatively willing to engage in Woolworth's new endeavour: His concerns mainly centred on the fact that the majority of the managers who followed the decision did so out of loyalty to Woolworth, and that moving such a valuable resource already established in the United States to what was a financially unproven "Little Infant" in the UK would have a detrimental effect upon the "Bread and Butter" of the Company.
1900s–1910s
Despite reservations such as Peck's, the decision to launch in the United Kingdom went ahead as previously planned by Woolworth. He considered several locations for the first shops, together with future possible sites. The chosen location for the first shop was 25-25A Church Street and 8 Williamson Street in the centre of Liverpool. It opened on 5 November 1909 with a performance by a full orchestra, circus acts and fireworks.As a means of adherence to American trading tradition, only viewing of items was allowed on the first day of the shop's opening. This included guests being given complementary tea while being entertained by a traditional brass band in the refreshment room. The event was reported positively by the local newspaper, the Liverpool Courier, which praised the decor of the shops along with the value and range of items on sale.
Despite local press praise, British national newspaper the Daily Mail likened Frank Woolworth to American showman P. T. Barnum and claimed that the location had been decided as part of a contingency plan in the event of failure so as to facilitate escape from any financial liability. Despite these reservations, the shop proved to be a success; large queues outside and low priced 3d. and 6d. items leading to it being almost stripped bare of goods before the end of the first day of trading and being attributed to mass purchased mass-produced foreign and local goods.
The business expanded into Ireland, opening a shop on Grafton Street in Dublin on 23 April 1914 Plans and one on High Street in Belfast on 6 November 1915.
At the onset of the First World War, F.W. Woolworth & Co. had 40 shops in Great Britain and Ireland located in most major cities - from which a total of 57 staff including shop managers had enlisted; the majority of whom did not return after the end of the war in 1918. Despite American staff again offering their services to the Woolworths branches in Britain, remaining staff increased their efforts to cope with the lack of staff members throughout the war with several staff members being promoted to managerial positions.
Shops in the United States, which were then stocking ranges also present in British shops, were dependent upon European manufacturers which had adopted newer production methods than their American counterparts.
1920s–1930s
After the First World War, the company continued to expand with the opening of further branches. By 1923, there were 130 branches, and William Lawrence Stephenson became managing director. He implemented a strategy of major expansion, with the company buying or building freehold properties. Many of the shops had distinctive faience tiled art deco frontages. The expansion was funded entirely out of earnings and without any borrowing or further capitalisation. The 400th branch, at Southport, Lancashire, opened on 12 July 1930, and the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1931. The US parent company reduced its holding in the company to 51.7% at that time. In 1934, the 600th shop was opened, in Wallington in Surrey.1940s–1950s
Expansion was effectively suspended between 1940 and 1950, owing to the Second World War and post-war restrictions, but then resumed. The 800th branch, at Wilton Road, Victoria, London, opened in September 1953.A shop was opened in Kingston in Jamaica in 1954. This was followed in 1959 by one in Salisbury in Southern Rhodesia ; its layout was based on that of a shop in Guildford. Woolworth also operated shops in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the West Indies.
On 22 May 1958, the 1,000th branch opened in Boundary Road, Hove. The peak of 1,141 branches was reached in the late 1960s. From then until the US parent sold out in 1982, a number of branches were closed and sold, and at the time that ownership shifted to the UK, there were about 1,000 branches.
1960s–1970s
Woolworths tried the large out-of-town or hypermarket format in the 1960s with the Woolco shops. While some of these were closed, the majority were sold to the Dee Corporation in the early 1980s and reopened as Gateway hypermarkets, later being taken over by Asda.One of Woolworths' flagship locations, on Briggate in Leeds, suffered a major fire in 1969. The shop, which opened in 1913, was spread over four floors and sustained extensive damage, requiring a total refit. The shop was not open to the public at the time and the building was evacuated, avoiding fatalities, although some staff suffered minor injuries. It took several hours for the fire to be fully extinguished.
1980s–1990s
In 1982, the British Woolworths and its sister chain B&Q were acquired by Paternoster Stores Ltd, the forerunner of Kingfisher plc. Woolworths Group plc was formed by the demerger of Kingfisher's general merchandise business, and began trading as a listed company on the London Stock Exchange on 28 August 2003, using the symbol WLW.In October 1984, the Woolworths shops in the Republic of Ireland were closed. In August 1996, market research was undertaken by Woolworths investigating opportunities to re-enter the Republic of Ireland market. About 32 potential locations were identified that could support a Woolworths location. However, the project did not proceed beyond the market research phase.
During the 1980s, management rationalised merchandise lines into clearly defined categories: entertainment, home, children and confectionery. Many Woolworths branches were downsized during this time. Older branches in major cities were sometimes almost as large as the major department stores nearby. In 1987, for example, Woolworths left its five-floor branch on Briggate in Leeds, which it had occupied since 1913, and kept only its smaller single-level branch in the Merrion Centre. This was in an area of the city centre which had less pedestrian traffic, of shoppers who were generally on a lower budget.
Woolworths did have several smaller outlets during the 1990s which sold music and confectionery. Smaller outlets with a similar format were also tried at the Sheffield Meadowhall Shopping Centre, but closed in 2003; the Manchester Music and Video shop was superseded by a larger MVC shop, owned by Woolworths Group.
In the late 1990s, the management extended the Woolworths brand into other retail formats and alternative channels to accelerate growth by taking advantage of changing retail trends. Some larger-format shops were opened under the Big W brand, similar to Wal-Mart in the US. Although it was successful at the beginning, the format failed to catch on; the original plan had relied upon leveraging the involvement of other Kingfisher group retailers, but following the de-merger this was no longer possible.